DR. JOHN P. DUDLEY

    This name is worthy of enrollment among the pioneers of Santa Clara County, as the Doctor has been a resident of the county since 1850. He now lives on the Almaden road five miles from the Court House of San Jose. His birth occurred in Steuben County, New York, August 1, 1822. He is the son of Moses and Mary (Atwood) Dudley. Moses Dudley was born in Portland, Maine, in 1796, and was the son of Jeremiah Dudley. The family is of English origin, and trace their American ancestry back to the historic days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Jeremiah Dudley, the grandfather of our subject, with his large family, left for the State of Maine, and established a residence in Steuben County, New York. The names of his five sons were: David, John, Moses, Thomas, and Benjamin. He had four daughters, viz.: Mehitable, who wedded Jonathan Fluent; Lydia, who married Samuel Le Grow; Polly, who became the wife of Josiah Moore; and Louise, who remained a maiden. Descendants of the family are scattered all over the West and Northwest. Jeremiah Dudley died at the home which he had established in Steuben County, and which afterward became the home of John Dudley. Moses Dudley married and settled down to a farm life in the same county, and ended his days there, dying at the age of seventy-eight years. His widow still survives, and lives on the old homestead established by Jeremiah Dudley. She is cared for by her son, Henry C. Dudley. She is the mother of ten children, six of whom are now living. 

    Dr. Dudley, whose name heads this sketch, is the eldest of this large family, and Mrs. Lydia F. Moulton, who resides in the Hamilton District in this county, is the youngest. The names of the others, in the order of their birth, are as follows: Mrs. Jane Allerton, who died in Steuben County, New York, not many years ago; Joseph, a resident of that county; Benjamin S., a resident of Medical Lake, Washing­ton Territory; Moses, Jr., a resident of Tulare County, this State; Guilford, a resident of Topeka, Kansas; and Henry, who lives in Steuben County, New York. The first-born and the eighth child died in infancy.

    John P. Dudley, our subject, was reared to a farm life, and early inured to the hard labor of youthful years in those days. He received the education of the public schools, and in 1843 commenced the study of medicine in the office of Dr. Pulling, of Steuben County. He afterward attended the Geneva Medical College, and still later continued and completed his preparatory studies at Buffalo Medical University, Millard Fillmore being the President of the institution. The Doctor practiced in Buffalo from 1846 to 1849, when the tide of the gold emigration caught him in its outward flow, and brought him overland to Cali­fornia. He practiced medicine in Sacramento until June, 1850, when he went to mining on the Middle Fork of the Yuba River. In November of the same year he became a resident of Santa Clara County.

    On the fourth of November, 1874, the Doctor was united in marriage with Miss Lizzie L. Staniford, daughter of Horatio C. and M. Louise (Breck) Staniford. Her father was born in Portland, Maine, and her mother at Hartwick, Vermont. The parents were married in Allegany County, New York, in 1833. The father died at East Saginaw, Michigan, January 3, 1870, at the age of fifty-eight years, and the mother now lives with her daughter, Mrs. Dudley. Mrs. Dudley, who came from Michigan in 1873, has one brother, George B., in San Luis Obispo County, this State, and two brothers, Joseph B. and William A., living in Michigan. Dr. and Mrs. Dudley have two daughters, Louisa and Flora. The Doctor is quite a mechanical genius, and has invented and patented a horseshoe intended to equalize the bearing on the hoof. If generally adopted this could not but be of great value.

Pen Pictures From The Garden of the World or Santa Clara County, California, Illustrated. - Edited by H. S. Foote.- Chicago:  The Lewis Publishing Company, 1888.
Pg. 412-413